Lifeline phone service goes wireless

TELEPHONES Only landlines have been covered in past - now homeless, low-income can keep in touch

Hoping soon to sign up for a free phone and service plan with a cell phone company called Assurance Wireless, Romonica Grayson, a low income resident of San Francisco who pays $103 a month for a shared phone service with her son, makes a call on Market Street, Monday Mach 04, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. "It'll be a relief to have a bill I won't have to worry about," said Grayson.
After years of pressure from homeless advocates, a free cellphone service for the poor and indigent is finally debuting Monday. The program by service provider Assurance Wireless, an arm of telephone giant Sprint, is particularly important to homeless people because they can now use cellphones to keep in touch with job, shelter and welfare officials so they won't miss appointments, and they can keep in touch with family. less

Hoping soon to sign up for a free phone and service plan with a cell phone company called Assurance Wireless, Romonica Grayson, a low income resident of San Francisco who pays $103 a month for a shared phone ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Hoping soon to sign up for a free phone and service plan with a cell phone company called Assurance Wireless, Romonica Grayson, a low income resident of San Francisco who pays $103 a month for a shared phone service with her son, makes a call on Market Street, Monday Mach 04, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. "It'll be a relief to have a bill I won't have to worry about," said Grayson.
After years of pressure from homeless advocates, a free cellphone service for the poor and indigent is finally debuting Monday. The program by service provider Assurance Wireless, an arm of telephone giant Sprint, is particularly important to homeless people because they can now use cellphones to keep in touch with job, shelter and welfare officials so they won't miss appointments, and they can keep in touch with family. less

Hoping soon to sign up for a free phone and service plan with a cell phone company called Assurance Wireless, Romonica Grayson, a low income resident of San Francisco who pays $103 a month for a shared phone ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Lifeline phone service goes wireless

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With no phone and no money to pay for one, Romonica Grayson often has to use the early 20th century method of getting ahold of someone: She hikes over to that someone's house and knocks on the door.

Sometimes she'll borrow a phone - no easy trick, considering many people in the Sunnydale public housing project in San Francisco where she lives also have no telephone service.

Those days are about to end, though. And not just for her, but for many other poor people in California.

As of Monday, two companies are now offering free cell phones and service to anyone in the state who can prove that his or her annual income is less than $14,702.

The program is part of the federally funded Lifeline effort, which until now in California provided only landline phone service to the poor.

On Thursday, the state Public Utilities Commission expanded Lifeline to cell phones, allowing those who qualify to receive free phones and monthly plans for 250 talk minutes and 250 text messages.

Advocates for the homeless - including the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness and Bevan Dufty, the city's head of homeless initiatives - have been pushing the commission to approve the program for three years. They pointed out that, with landline usage plummeting and cell phones becoming more the norm, cell-phone Lifeline plans have already been approved in most other states.

Now life is about to change for Grayson and thousands of others without phones.

For some of them, having a phone means being able to be called back quickly on job applications and to keep up on appointments for government assistance. Homeless people will now be able to confirm shelter openings without walking miles and potentially missing out on beds.

Everyone in dire straits can now also stay in touch with family and friends. That may sound simple to those with means, but for those in crisis it can mean life or death.

"Everything will be different now," Grayson said as she picked up application information at City Hall on Monday. "I've had a service that's too expensive for me and borrowed a phone to use it, but now I can have my own plan and my own phone that I can afford. Now I can finally be sure I will be able to get ahold of people to do what I need to do in a timely fashion."

As president of the Sunnydale Tenants Association, the unemployed 41-year-old mother of three helps coordinate social events, parent services and other activities at the 2,900-resident public housing project. She was at Dufty's office Monday to learn how to help Sunnydale residents apply for the free service.

The phones are available through Assurance Wireless, an arm of Sprint, and Reach Out Wireless, which is part of Nexus Communications.

Dufty said that in the coming weeks he will send representatives to low-income housing complexes, homeless shelters and other places where people will want to know how to apply for the free phones.

"We are very excited by this," he said. "It will help people move forward. It will empower them, and we in San Francisco are going to be a model city for this program."